Swarthmore drops football

Swarthmore head football
coach Pete Alvanos cries while addressing the crowd at a Saturday
night rally.

Photo by Claire Weiss. The Phoeni

At halftime of the Stagg Bowl,
Swarthmore head coach Pete Alvanos joined D3football.com's Pat
Cummings via phone. After a brief analysis of the first half of the
game, they discussed Swarthmore football:

D3football.com: Two Saturdays ago word came down. Why don't
you describe the situation for our listeners.
Pete Alvanos: We knew this committee was formed and that
they were going to look at the overall athletic program. So we were
kind of in limbo, so to speak, before recruiting started because
the committee was meeting about certain recommendations. Then on
the 15th of November we got the green light to go out on the road,
recruiting for next season. Things looked good at that point in
time. It was the Thursday right before two Saturdays ago – my
dates are running into each other – I got a phone call, I'm
on the road, down in Maryland recruiting, and basically it was from
the provost, who said 'Coach, you have to come off the road, I have
to meet with you.'

I met with her late Thursday afternoon and she had said to me that
the committee had an emergency meeting and that they were going to
recommend to drop football, purely based on numbers. 'It had
nothing to do with Pete Alvanos, or the way we coached our teams,
or anything that happened on campus' – not that anything did
happen. She said 'Coach, this is not a definite, the board is going
to have to vote on it,' that weekend.

At that point in time I still felt somewhat comfortable because I
knew the Quaker consensus philosophy and things of that nature. So
I really wasn't nervous because I knew there would not, I didn't
think there would be a consensus on the Board. Neil Austrian and
[unintelligible] were two Board members that I met with prior,
they're the ones that kind of talked me into taking the job
2½ years ago. I went out to lunch with both of those men on
Friday and they said 'Coach, we'll come and see you on Saturday
with the outcome.' And lo and behold it was 1:00 on Saturday
afternoon, and the door opens and there's Neil Austrian and I stand
up and he says 'No no, coach, you need to sit back down.' And
that's when he says 'Coach, we lost. They're dropping
football.'

At first you're numb, you're in shock, but the more these guys
started talking about everything, the discussion and so on and so
forth, it was real. When they left I just sat in my office and
basically cried, because I'm sitting here thinking we finally
turned the corner with the program and we were getting our numbers
[of players] increased while maintaining the higher academic
standards of Swarthmore. The hardest phone call I had to make was
to my wife and to tell her what exactly happened and then the phone
calls just went to my parents and to the staff... and it was just a
trying day, to be honest with you, because you never want to
believe that a program's going to be dropped on your watch. You put
your heart and soul and energy into building something basically
from the ground up, and this was just a decision that the board
felt and this committee felt was right for the institution. It just
comes as a shock to everyone.

D3: I've seen the team first-hand here in the Centennial
Conference and the turnaround with the team was tremendous. The
game I saw against Dickinson was a Swarthmore loss, but that was a
good game. Ken Clark, the freshman running back, first team
all-conference, the Garnet went 4-5 this season. It came as a
complete shock to me having seen the team for the past two years
and the turnaround that you and the coaching staff made and the
quality of players you got in there. Did it hurt more knowing the
quality of a team you really had?
PA: That's what hurts the most. We beat every bush and
turned over every stone we could possibly turn over to find the
quality scholar-athlete we have on our team, that is first-rate in
the classroom and first-rate football players. I said to my wife
the other night, 'The thing that I'm going to live with for the
rest of my years is that I'll never know if we could have had a
winning season at Swarthmore.' While I think we would have won 5, 6
or 7 games next year – I really believe that because we only
graduated six seniors and we only lost two starters on defense and
one on offense. That's the thing that's just going to eat at me
because I just felt like we were right there. I'm not going to say
that we would have competed for the conference championship but
certainly could have been in the top three or four. I really
believe that in my heart. That's what I struggle with on a personal
level.

D3: How great was it as a coach to have the feeling that
when Swarthmore came in to play people weren't always saying,
'We're going to come in and wipe the floor.' That didn't happen
this season and the team really garnered respect.
PA: I appreciate it and that's something we took pride in
as a coaching staff and the kids took pride in. They worked so hard
in the offseason to get things done, to lift, and to do all the
things that obviously, you can't make anyone do in Division III.
They took that on their own. They had an offseason meeting and made
a commitment to each other that they didn't want to be the
laughingstock of Division III football, or of the Centennial
Conference anymore. They saw how committed we were as a coaching
staff and they wanted to be just as committed as players. If we had
one compliment this year, we had a hundred about how much more
physical our kids were and what better shape we were in, and it was
all the kids. It was their desire to get into the weight room and
lift and make a legitimate commitment to being competitive and
winning some football games.

D3: Far from where you were over a year ago, and if
anything you guys have become the heart and soul of Division III
football, even in the absence of an actual team now.
PA: Well, I appreciate it, and like I said, the calls have
been coming in from coaches throughout the country, which I'm
greatly appreciative of, and just Division III fans, because of
your Internet service that you supply, we're getting letters and
e-mails and I'm just very grateful for those people out there who
are making a plea or a case to the president and to the provost and
even to the Board of Managers. At this point in time, we'll just
have to see. I know the alumni are really working hard, and the
players and parents, to try to get the board to possibly meet again
and maybe reinstate the program. I don't know how realistic that is
at this point, I don't know what the odds are of that happening,
but I know there are some people behind-the-scenes that are really
making a push for that to happen.

D3: I know there are and that the entire Division III
community is behind you, but let's talk about the future for a
second. If this does not get reinstated, how many players do you
envision transferring out of Swarthmore and where do you see
yourself going?
PA: At this point in time, as the players have come to us
we've been granting transfer releases to as many kids as come to
us. We probably have anywhere from 15 to 20 players who have come
to us as a staff to say they'd be interested in a host of schools,
whether it be Amherst, Williams, the University of Chicago,
Washington & Lee, Johns Hopkins. There's a number of schools
that our kids are interested in, because they came here obviously
for the great academic institution that it is, but they also came
here to play football and be a part of building something. They've
played the game their whole lives and they want to continue
playing. So that's where we're at. I would envision about 15 or 20
or so transferring.

As far as personally, I don't know what I'm going to do right now.
I've been talking with my wife and I'm just not real sure. I sort
of do want to coach again and there are some things out there that
I would possibly pursue. But at this point in time I just want to
sit down with the president and see exactly what his thoughts are
and things of that nature and certainly make a decision that's best
for my family and me.